


Equilibrium

by Trisa_Slyne



Category: Reylo - Fandom, Star Wars, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, TLJ, The Last Jedi
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Calligraphy, F/M, Home Sweet Home, Sassy Luke, Torture, Whipping, damn dramatic skywalkers, not the sexy kind of whipping
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-06 17:46:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416396
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trisa_Slyne/pseuds/Trisa_Slyne
Summary: Just as the Light calls to Kylo Ren, the Dark calls to Rey, whispering about the untold secrets of her past. Knowledge is power, but it can also corrupt. As one moves toward the light, the other falls into darkness, until they admit balance rests with one another. (Set after TLJ)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s Note: I don’t own the rights to Star Wars, the characters, or anything related so please don’t sue me. Thank you elgupo867 and the future unseen for beta-ing! If you’re interested in helping me beta a chapter or so please PM me to let me know. Eventual smut and M rating. ALL HAIL REYLO!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: I don’t own the rights to Star Wars, the characters, or anything related so please don’t sue me. The party mentioned in this story is in the book and the deleted scenes of the movie. Thank you elgupo867 and thefutureunseen for beta-ing this fic! Thank you to all the review taggers on ff.n who gave concrit- especially Zyellowz. It’s become so much better thanks to you all. Thank you mai-draws for giving me permission to use your art as my cover image! ALL HAIL REYLO!

**_Deep Space, Millennium Falcon_ **

Kylo Ren.

Mortal Enemy.

The Supreme Leader of the First Order.

Ben Solo.

Personal Confidant.

Temporary Ally.

Each title aptly described the man clad in black stalking behind the scavenger-turned-Jedi, but now Rey could add a new title to the list: Privacy Invader. This recent addition was currently the most prominent one in her mind after her failed attempt to sever their daily connection back on Crait. Thank the Force he only seemed to appear when she was mostly alone. And clothed. Though apparently whatever entity it was that timed these things wasn’t as concerned with that as she was.

She could feel him glaring a hole into the back of her skull, but she refused to turn around. Of course, they couldn’t dance around one another forever. Unspoken words were strangling them both, and eventually one of them would have to gasp for air. It seemed like Ben - she would never again call him Kylo Ren - would be the one to breathe first.

She continued through her motions with her quarterstaff in the common room of the _Millennium Falcon_ , Ben’s glower making her movements tenser than usual. She gripped her staff tighter, tempted to turn around and swing it at him, just to see if it would make contact. They had tried various things on one another so far: she had shot him; he had commanded her with the Force. Neither had had an effect.

It suddenly occurred to her a more physical blow might be more effective. They had managed to touch hands before Luke had intruded on them. She had thought about that moment often, wondering what other ways they might have touched one another had her childhood hero not interrupted them. That vision of them both together, rebuilding the Jedi temple, never alone again had given her such a longing to lean forward and press her lips to his.

She had felt the same way in the elevator to the throne room, and again after defeating Snoke’s guards, but it had shriveled up when she remembered her friends dying. Everything inside her had done the same when Ben chose the darkness rather than join her in the light.

Her blood froze as she now considered deadly alternative scenarios involving his hands. There were many methods a person could use to maim or even murder without weapons: strangling, beating, gouging out eyes…

“I offered you everything,” her tormentor said right behind her, his voice like acid.

She whirled around and swung at his head with all her strength. He blocked the blow with the hilt of his lightsaber and activated it. The unstable blade crackled to life, bathing their faces in its angry red glow.

His eyes glittered dangerously. “And now, just like then, you want to kill me.” He glanced at the lightsaber. “Shall we see if _this_ can transmute across the bond?”

She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached and shoved away from him. “If I wanted to kill you I would have done so when I woke before you.”

His eyes never left hers as he resumed his pacing, swinging the lightsaber around in slow, lazy circles. She resisted the urge to back away and instead held her quarterstaff defensively in front of herself. A dark laugh escaped his curled lips, “More like your conscience couldn’t condone murdering an unconscious person.”

She glared at him but remained silent. She _had_ wanted to kill him, many times. Now was tempting, too. But when she had woken first and found him there… There had been a lot of things she had wanted to do to him, but none of them had been violent. Nor had they been productive in saving her friends.

He sneered at her, “Don’t worry, Luke can train you on how to get over that.”

Rey stepped back as if he had struck her. Before she could respond, Ben cut the connection, leaving her to ponder over their interactions from his perspective.

~*~

**_Unknown Regions, Ahch-To._ **

As soon as Rey stepped onto the sacred island she took a deep breath, and with its release she let go of her regret, grief, and anger. The scent of the surrounding ocean, the gentle breeze caressing her face, and the cries of the soaring Porgs, and the lounging Thala-sirens soothed the jagged edges in her. She closed her eyes and reached out with the Force, sensing the balance here that eased her nerves and brought on a sense of peace and calm. She understood more now than when she first arrived, why Luke had decided to stay for so long. Though, how he drank that mucosal green milk, she would never know.

An ever-present sense of familiarity settled over her, as well. This island and its ocean had featured in her dreams so many times throughout her childhood that it felt like another home. She was certain she had somehow learned to swim from those nightly adventures. That was the only explanation she could think of for why she hadn’t drowned when the Dark Side pulled her into its cavern. It was oddly comforting that this place had somehow prepared her for her eventual arrival.

She felt the Force drawing her toward one specific path and relief washed over her. She wasn’t used to trusting these instincts, but she was slowly learning to do so. Rey opened her eyes and called back to Chewie and R2-D2 that she wouldn’t be long. As she traversed down the jagged path she recognized where it was leading her, and guilt coiled in her belly at her actions the last time she had travelled this way.

Until she found herself at the sacred uneti tree. 

Or what was left of it.

The blackened, hulking remains only vaguely resembled what had once been an already ugly, shell of a tree, but the interior had completely collapsed. She felt any remorse over absconding with the sacred texts, evaporate swiftly. The feeling was replaced by confusion. Luke had been adamant that the time of the Jedi was over, but this was extreme even for him. Questions about Luke’s and the Force’s intentions overwhelmed her.

A gentle tug had her continuing forward. _Trust in the Force_ , she reminded herself as she found a small opening near a particularly charred section of the trunk. She pushed on it and it crumbled into an opening large enough for her to crawl through. She eyed it warily, imagining the tree collapsing on her and squishing her, or behind her and trapping her. She set her quarterstaff and bag down at the entrance and took a few deep breaths, a constant mantra that she could have faith in the Force running on an endless loop in her head. 

With a final deep breath, she got down on her hands and knees to crawl into the opening. After a few heart-thumping turns, it opened into what was left of the main part of the tree. Light filtered in through the cracks, reflecting off some object to her left. She looked and found the collapsed remains of where Luke had stored the sacred texts.

A large gash ran through the wood, exposing a secret compartment beneath the shelf that she had not noticed before. She stood up into a crouch, patting the soot and debris off her hands, and began to make her way through the rubble to the winking light. As she neared it, the object in question came into focus. A lightsaber, slightly mangled, lay on top of a blue book with the same insignia on it as the one on the sacred tomes emblazoned upon the leather cover. She withdrew both, examining the saber’s mangled hilt intently in the poor lighting.

One instinct suggested she turn it on, while another screamed at her not to. Something seemed unbalanced about it. She would need to take it apart and see if the damage extended beyond the hilt. Rey crawled her way out of the tree to examine the other item in her hands, the blue book titled _The Jedi Path_. When she opened it she found a variety of names inscribed upon the inside cover, the last of which read Luke Skywalker. Her eyebrows shot up as she read another name, Anakin Skywalker. Was that Luke’s father, Ben’s grandfather, or just some distant relative? 

She instinctively clipped the lightsaber to her belt, feeling a momentary pang of loss for the old one. She placed the book into her pouch and retrieved her belongings she had left outside. She wanted to go immediately back to the ship and pore over the new text she had found and dismantle the lightsaber to see if she could repair it. Yet, something felt unfinished here. She found herself moving along the path once more, heading to the Jedi Temple. A few minutes later she found herself standing inside of it.

The smooth glass mosaic on the floor had been recently cleaned until it shone, and her reflection, as she approached, was both clear and blurred within the image. Rey stopped to examine it a moment and felt a strange sense of vertigo, as if she were moments away from falling into the picture. She stepped back, puzzled at the odd sensation.   

Upon the stone border near the head of the mural lay a dark brown bundle which caught her eye. She eyed the image of the Jedi warily as she made her way around its edges until she was at the top. She fingered the rough fabric of Luke’s ceremonial Jedi robes. They were freshly cleaned and neatly folded, most likely thanks to the Caretakers, Lanais, living on the island. She shook them out and slid her hands through the wide sleeves. They would have to be taken in, and pockets were a must, but for the most part, they fit.  
  
The finality of Luke’s death hit Rey as she gazed down at herself. Tears pricked the edges of her eyes at the sudden pounding behind her eyes, and the tightness of her face. Growing up, she had heard of the courageous Luke Skywalker who had saved the galaxy from the evil Emperor and his apprentice, Darth Vader. So many of her childhood fantasies had involved flying alongside him against the Empire.  
  
Luke had been nothing like her childhood stories had made him out to be. By the time she had found him, he had been a bitter old man, content to rot in solitude until he winked out of existence. He had done everything to get rid of her: ignored her, sent her on wild chases, insulted her. He had even feared her power to the point he refused to teach her beyond an initial lesson or two.  

He had told her true Jedi Knights maintained the balance by doing nothing when people suffered.

Rey ripped the robes off herself. She wouldn’t be a Jedi Knight, then. Luke himself had said the Jedi Order needed to end. He had even gone as far as to destroy its first temple. Also, according to Leia, Luke had made an appearance on Crait right before they had both felt him disappear. Maybe he had ended life as a non-Jedi, as well.

She flung the robes over an arm and glanced at the lightsaber instead.

“Surely, they don’t smell _that_ bad for you to have to get out of them so quickly,” a voice said. “It took a lot of convincing to get one of the Caretakers to take them out of storage and put them here. I figured they had cleaned them already.”

On instinct, Rey whirled around and wielded the staff before her defensively. She took a step back when she found Luke but also not the Luke she had known. He wore black robes instead of the brown ones she had just claimed, and his hair and beard were trimmed, without a single trace of the gray that had overtaken most of it when he trained her.

“I felt you die,” she said slowly, eyeing the figure before her distrustfully. She briefly wondered if the temple or the island itself was showing this to her.

Luke, or his lookalike, held his hands out to the side as if weighing invisible objects. “Die... Become one with the Force...” He shrugged and folded his hands into his robe, the same robe Rey now had draped over her arm. “Different interpretations of the same thing.”

“Become one with the Force? I thought you already were one with the Force because you were a Jedi?”

Luke sighed in exasperation and pinched his nose. “Of course you wouldn’t know what that means,” he muttered. He rolled his eyes and clarified in a sardonic tone. “It means I’m special.”

That certainly sounded like him. Rey cocked her head. “Prove you’re him and not some trick.”

Luke gave her a challenging grin, “You once told me dancing was scarier than fighting.” 

Rey scowled, her face burning as she recalled the moment. Luke had told her some approaching ships were raiders who frequently came and plundered the sacred island. Luke had also told her it was better not to act in order to avoid incurring their wrath and an even larger raiding party the next time. In her haste to save them, she had destroyed a gate, and interrupted what had turned out to be a celebration. Luke had taken advantage of her bewilderment to invite her to a dance, which she did, until she was able to think straight again. She had told him how she had believed in his legend, but not anymore.

“It wasn’t like the Caretakers needed another reason to dislike me,” Rey scowled. She had damaged a hut with her blaster and knocked a boulder into one of their carts even before that incident.

Luke shrugged but looked beyond her at the mosaic. “I needed you to understand being a Jedi isn’t what the universe needs right now. Or at least, not the Jedi of the Jedi Order.”  

“Why couldn’t you just tell me those things? Why make me go through all that?”

“Because you keep thinking of the Jedi as the heroes, and the Sith as the villains. Yet Darth Vader arose from the Jedi Order. He was a Jedi Knight who became corrupted. He was considered weak for his familial attachments, and that is why he fell.”

The usual memory of a woman, telling Rey she’d come back for her, flashed in her mind. But right after was a vision of a hallway with closed doors along either side, from which erupted terrified moans and screams. Ever since Snoke had torn through her mind in order to pilfer information about Luke, strange memories had unlocked and begun to play before her at random moments. She was having trouble distinguishing them from her childhood nightmares. She prayed confronting these phantoms on Jakku would help.

“Yet, it was his familial attachments which also redeemed him.” Luke’s voice brought Rey back to the present moment. She was momentarily lost for words as the last tortured sounds faded away.

Shaken by the vision or whatever it had been, she blurted out what had been burning inside of her for a while now, “Why didn’t you use your connection to Ben to save him as you saved Darth Vader?”

Luke released a breath, appearing older as he considered his words. “We both know that I am the root of his hatred. If I had gone with you in person, Ben would have slain me without hesitation. Killing his father cut him to the bone. Killing me…” Luke looked away. “I’m sure he would have felt relief at the demise of his own personal tormentor.”

Before recent events, Rey would have insisted Luke, hero of the galaxy, could never be viewed as the villain of anyone’s story. But after Ben had told her his side of that one fateful night, and after Luke had admitted to it, she understood. Luke, the Legend, was a man after all, and he was capable of making horrible mistakes, just like anyone else.

Luke looked at her again, “I can’t say it would have hurt him as much as killing Han did, but resolving our conflict violently would have surely pushed him further from the Light. I failed him once already; I couldn’t fail him again.”

Rey felt her spirits lift. She couldn’t hold herself back from expressing her greatest hope, “He hasn’t already been pushed all the way to the Dark side? He can be saved?”

“I wouldn’t have gone to Crait if I didn’t believe so. There is no depth to which anyone can fall from which they cannot rise. Even my father redeemed himself, albeit the cost was his life.” Seeing the look on her face, Luke held up a cautionary hand. “Ben has to want to change. Han tried to reach him and failed. Leia cannot forgive herself in her part in pushing him away. I have the feeling you, of all the people in the galaxy, will be the one to reach him.” He raised a brow at Rey meaningfully.

Ben’s outstretched hand reaching out to hers popped into her mind. Rey’s heart thumped in her chest as she schooled her face into what she hoped was a neutral expression. “I already tried. He chose to stay and rule the First Order.”

Luke scoffed. “Don’t tell me he asked you to rule the galaxy with him.”

Rey looked up, surprised.

Luke wiped his face with his hand. “Of course he did. An emulation of my father, through and through.” Luke rolled his eyes. “My father offered the same thing to me and I also rejected him.” Rey thought she heard him mutter something about his family being ‘so damn dramatic’ but she couldn’t be sure.

“I rejected him as well.”

“Of course you did.” Luke stroked his goatee thoughtfully. “Though that may explain why he said he would destroy you along with the Jedi Order when he and I fought on Crait.”

Rey’s stomach dropped. She had been correct to assume Ben wished her harm. The pain died as she realized she had validation for reacting so defensively earlier. Bewilderment rushed in with the affirmation. If he wanted to kill her, as he had said and she had suspected, why had he gotten upset about her reacting as such?

Luke’s voice softened. “His rage often rules him too strongly, but it may be through his sentiment you will be able to reach him.”

Rey’s eyes locked on Luke’s. Luke’s mouth twitched into a smirk. “That little hand holding I interrupted seemed awfully intimate.” Rey blushed. Luke laughed. “I’m not so old as to have forgotten the ardor of youth. I can’t illuminate everything for you or tell you exactly how to bring balance to the Force. Maybe Ben is a part of that. Maybe not. You have to make your own decisions. I will say this: There is no good without bad or light without darkness.”

Rey stepped forward as Luke started to fade away. “Wait, I still need your guidance.”

“I’ll be back,” he smiled kindly. “We’ve got some training to do, but you have to confront your own conflict, first. Whatever it is that troubles you, let it go.”

Surprised once more flickered across her face. She had not realized Luke had been able to sense her own confusion. As he twinkled out of sight, her mind raced. She had so many paths before her, but the one behind called to her the strongest. _The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is ahead. Let the past die. Kill it if you have to. Let it go._

Everyone was encouraging her to overcome her past, but she couldn’t just disregard it. She had to make sense of these strange visions and all the questions plaguing her about her abandonment. Something in her memory kept calling out to her, and it was time for her to call back.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Note: All my knowledge comes from the movies and Wookipedia, so please forgive any inconsistencies with canon. I tried to research as much as I could but I’m sure I’ll miss something. Thanks to my amazing betas, elgupo867 and thefutureunseen!

**Chapter 2**

_ Author’s Note: All my knowledge comes from the movies and Wookieepedia, so please forgive any inconsistencies with canon. I tried to research as much as I could but I’m sure I’ll miss something, so let me know. For those who didn’t know, in the novel and the deleted scenes, Unkar Plutt is seen harassing Rey about how much she owes him for what she’s done. It doesn’t end well for him once Chewie gets involved. Thanks to my amazing betas, elgupo867 and thefutureunseen! _

**_Jakku, Goazoan Badlands_ **

Sand stretched endlessly in every direction; scattered among the dunes lay the remains of the last great war. One piece of wreckage, separated from any other relic by at least a mile, lay spread-eagle on its belly, resembling the skeleton of some great beast more so than the rusting remains of a once-deadly fighting machine.

Rey examined her former refuge, the AT-AT,  _ Hellhound Two _ , from her new one, the equally ancient but still functioning  _ Millennium Falcon _ , as they landed. The piece of junk before her with its odd angles and sharp lines was as familiar as the freckles on her face. She had been the one to see its potential as not only a meal-ticket but also a safe-haven. All it had taken was a little welding on all the hatches except the auxiliary one to prevent intruders, and she had a place only she knew how to access.

Sand worked its way uncomfortably into her clothes as she exited the  _ Falcon _ alone, leaving Chewie and R2-D2 aboard doing repairs. They hadn’t had time to take stock of all that had happened to the ship after it had been stolen multiple times. Food rations, medical supplies, and their medical droid were the primary things she knew they lacked. It didn’t seem like it had been ransacked much more than that, but it was better to find out now rather than later if there were parts missing. She would go over it herself after, but for now she had personal business to attend to.

She approached the secret entrance of the hulking creature slowly, her eyes roaming over the crumbling, rusting exterior, waiting for some feeling to overtake her. “ _ Home sweet home!”  _ she had written in her journal, but instead of elation at being back, all she felt was a tension in her stomach. Rey had spent her entire life here, waiting for her family to come back, and when she’d been caught up in an adventure that had taken her away, she’d desperately worked to return. She had even rejected a position flying the galaxy with Han Solo so she could return here to wait.... for who?

_ Filthy junk traders,  _ rang through her head.  _ Dead in a ditch on Jakku. _

Her parents were dead, Han Solo was dead, Luke was dead… sort of. It was a little unclear. What was clear was that all she had left was a handful of people she cared about. That included her travelling partner, the famous Chewbacca, whom she had heard stories about from a Wookie who once stopped here. Was Chewie going to end up dead, too? Would Finn? 

Would she have to kill Ben? 

Panic began to swell within her, but she quickly shoved it aside along with the spare panel used to cover the auxiliary hatch . Since the outside had been undisturbed, she wasn’t surprised to find the inside just as she had left it. Her flowers were still on the table, albeit dried out. Her doll and helmet still held vigilance over her stash of food portions. The computer display she used to learn languages and become a pilot was still there above her newest pile of parts she had been planning to sell to Unkar. Honestly, the last two convinced her no one had been here, yet. 

She approached the table and fingered the crumbling spinebarrel blooms and nightblossoms she had collected to remind herself to have hope. To her, they had always been proof there was beauty everywhere and that anything could survive in the desert… even an abandoned orphan like herself. Her eyes blurred, and she swallowed thickly before turning away from them and making her way over to her stash of rations.

The raggedy doll she had made from a flight uniform leaned against the Rebel Alliance flight helmet which had inspired it. The name on the helmet read Dosmit Raeh and she recalled all the adventures she had had with the doll, exploring the AT-AT and the desert wasteland together, finding lost Rebels and helping them return to their ships… she smiled at the doll fondly. Her eyes roamed over the helmet. The last time she had worn it had been when she saved BB-8 from a Teedo. It seemed so long ago. Everything was so different now.

This place wasn’t home, anymore. It also wasn’t where her jumbled memories were leading her. No, she needed to see Unkar Plutt for that. For some reason, she remembered her parents flying off in some kind of ship, leaving her with Unkar. If what Ben had said was true about them selling her, was she Unkar’s property? He had never treated her like a slave. It wasn’t adding up. Something was missing and she had to figure it out. 

She moved quickly to fill her pockets with the few packets of green rations she had worked so hard to obtain. Rey had dealt with a constant threat of starvation before she had gotten good at discerning what was valuable. The habit to hoard food had stuck with her into adulthood but her stash had gotten dangerously low before she had left on her journey. She reflected back on the moment she seriously debated selling BB-8 to Unkar Plutt. She had been glad to deny him something he wanted and fly away in something he had lain claim to. 

She had been less pleased when he had come after her. Luckily for her, he had made the mistake of insulting and poking an injured Chewie and walked away with one less arm for it. As horrifying as the partial dismemberment had been, it had still been immensely gratifying to see Unkar scurrying off as fast as his fat little legs could take him. 

Her stash now empty but her pockets full, she moved to take one last look at her computer and decide if there were any parts from it she could take with her. Her heart stopped as she instead found herself drawn toward one specific wall. 

Thousands of small, white ticks were scratched into the unforgiving metal and seemed to extend for eternity. They towered over her, a menacing reminder of every day she had spent holed up in this corpse. Her vision blurred with tears but she couldn’t push them back this time. She sank to the floor, sobbing for the child whose parents weren’t coming; for the woman who, had fate not intervened, would’ve spent her entire life waiting here for people who  _ were not coming _ .

Over her sobbing she barely heard the person behind her say, “He knew you’d return here.” Before she could move she felt a sharp pain on her head, and then blackness. Deep, unending blackness.

~*~

**_Deep Space, Finalizer_ **

Kylo Ren walked briskly into his room and frowned at his desk. It was bulky and it dominated the tiny room, but he hadn’t yet managed to convince himself to move into Lord Snoke’s old quarters. Atop it, his grandfather’s melted helmet stared at him from among the other Sith relics he had collected together in preparation of his move to larger quarters.  _ Let the past die,  _ he had told Rey repeatedly, yet he had relics in his personal chambers. He reached for his belt, intent on destroying them then and there, but stopped himself. Surely they would one day be useful for something. He gathered the remnants of a past he had desperately tried to connect with and piled them into a corner. 

He returned to his black desk and pulled out a decorative wooden box used for his calligraphy pens, along with a  black leather-bound journal he had constructed himself. His desk held a bookended row of similar journals, all filled from his time since he had joined the First Order. His journal from his time at the Jedi Temple had been burned in one of his rages. He had regretted doing so, having lost the knowledge he had accumulated, and had begun a new journal immediately to document the information he could still recollect. 

Luke may have intended to teach Kylo this style of writing as a means for self-reflection and to curb his anger, but now Kylo had gone on to use it to document his studies of the Jedi and Sith, along with a scattering of his own personal thoughts when it was warranted. An added bonus was that the lilting script of the calligraphy pen would be indecipherable to anyone else who had not been taught it. 

His eyes roamed over his most recent entries about his mysterious connection to the scavenger named Rey. The connection Snoke had claimed to have created.  _ There’s something about her that eludes me… _ one entry began.  _ Is she really a simple scavenger, or is she something more? Could she be the girl from my vision?  _ Kylo paused in his reading. He glanced back at it, in the collection of other artifacts, memories swirling around him from the first time he had held it. 

_ A tall man in a black suit rose, his black cape billowing behind him. “ _ Rise, Darth Vader,”  _ spoke a gravelly voice.  _

_ That same man, on the floor, helmet off, laying before a younger man, a smile on his wrinkled whitened face.  _

_ A young boy playing with C3PO in an empty room while a disembodied voice whispered consolingly about his parents absence.  _

_ A girl, wearing an old Rebels helmet and playing with a doll, all alone.  _

_ An indistinguishable but lithe figure locking lightsabers with the Jedi Killer. _ _.  _

Kylo pulled out a different journal and flipped to the page where he had recorded the vision, along with his interpretations of it. The vision had clearly been a warning, according to Snoke. The boy was him and he was to learn from his grandfather’s mistakes. As Ren read through it, the voice that spoke to him as a child snagged at him. Instead of some imaginary friend crafted from loneliness, had that been Snoke whispering to him throughout his childhood? What did that mean? He made a note to reflect on such troubling thoughts during his next meditation session. 

For now, he would explain what had happened these past few days. He had not had time to write until now. A pleasurable sensation settled over him and he breathed in deeply, enjoying the scent of the ink and parchment. He relaxed into the act of looping the words across the paper, delighting in the fact that they resembled delicate ribbon that had been twisted into language. He continued to add flourishes where possible and lost himself in his task of creating something both aesthetically beautiful and immensely pragmatic.

_ Snoke is dead. I am the Supreme Leader now. Rey-  _ He stopped. He wouldn’t write about her rejection.  _ Today, Hux informed me he plans to build another Starkiller Base. “It won’t get blown up this time.” Right. This was the third planet destroyer to be destroyed by our opponents in this decades-long war. It has become a waste of resources to build something so large. Not to mention I can still feel that gaping hole in the Force where those planets used to exist. It is unsettling. I don’t need a planet destroyer to control the universe… but I do need an army, which is the only reason Hux yet lives despite his arguments when I rejected his plan.  _

Kylo paused a moment, mulling over his dilemma with Hux. He felt the Force shift behind him, a sign he knew too well, and he froze as he recalled the last time he had felt this sensation. He had broken their unspoken vow of silence after the less-than-productive meeting with Hux had left him in a rage. Things with her hadn’t gone much better. He had just been trying to talk and she had tried to strike him down. Again. The part of him that was Ben Solo whispered that if hadn’t spooked her all those times, she might not have responded in that way. He shoved those thoughts away.

When Rey didn’t speak, Kylo resumed writing, an uneasy feeling pooling in his gut. 

A strange sound behind him caught his attention and he frowned. He turned his seat around to face Rey. The first thing he noticed was that her clothes were gone and she was covered only by the tan cloths she used to bind her breasts and cover her private area between her thighs. Her arms were held up and back behind her, with bits of rope tied to her wrists, and her legs were bound together by similar rope. Any distraction her state of undress could offer was tempered by the red skin on her wrists from her bindings and the blood crusting on her scalp. If it hadn’t been for the distinct connected feeling, he might’ve thought Hux was preparing to use some of his more distasteful interrogation techniques on her in his room. 

Or in Hux’s chambers. 

“Where are you?” he demanded, his stomach clenching. She didn’t respond. He tried to sense where she might be using the Force, but he only got a vague sense of the direction, not a specific planet or place. His stomach unclenched as he realized she wasn’t nearby, wasn’t on this ship, wasn’t Hux’s newest personal project. He couldn’t fathom how she had found him across the galaxy before so easily but he realized now he needed to know, if only… he stopped himself from thinking any more about it. 

A large part of himself urged him to leap up and rush to her aid but he folded his arms. If she had found him in this state she would have slain him without remorse or hesitation. At least that was what he tried to convince himself she would do. Because of course she hadn’t done so. No, she had woken first from their struggle and spared him… After rejecting his offer to rule by his side and summoning his grandfather's lightsaber to use against him. 

He pushed those thoughts aside and instead thought back on how he had woken people before; every single one involved physical violence. Even when Rey had been in his custody he had let her sleep, preferring to watch and wait for her to wake naturally for some unfathomable reason. 

Some invisible force pulled her head back and her face whipped back and forth until her eyes snapped open and she screamed at whoever was assaulting her. Her heated gaze shifted to him.

It wasn’t until her eyes locked on his that he realized he was standing. The heat of her gaze didn’t soften even though he  _ knew _ she was looking at him and not her captor. Surely she couldn’t think he was to blame for her predicament. He glared back at her, unbuckling his saber and activating it. The red crackling light lit up the space between them but she did not flinch. He walked slowly toward her, blade pointed down, until its erratic bursts were inches from her face. 

_ Shall we see if  _ this  _ can transmute across the bond?  _

Executioner or Savior. 

Time to choose. 


End file.
